Ticket Messimania

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TONIGHT

THIS EVENING: CIHC studying bids for 30% of its stake in Eastern Company + Unemployment inches down in 2Q 2023

Good afternoon, wonderful people, and welcome to a busy hump day. Where yesterday was largely dominated by M&A news, today is shaping up to be a more heterogeneous news day, with a little bit of everything.

THE BIG STORIES TODAY

#1- CIHC studying acquisition bids for Eastern Company stake: State-owned Chemical Industries Holding Company (CIHC) is looking at several offers it has received to acquire 30% of its 51% stake in Eastern Company , CIHC said in a statement. Japan Tobacco International is also following Philip Morris’ footsteps with a rival minority stake bid in Eastern Company, Asharq Business reports, citing two unnamed sources reportedly familiar with the negotiations.

#2- Unemployment inched down to 7% in 2Q 2023, down 0.1 percentage points from the first quarter of the year, according to data (pdf) released by statistics agency Capmas. Unemployment was down 0.2 percentage points compared with the same period last year.

REMEMBER- The official unemployment rate only includes people who are looking for work. The labor force participation rate — which counts everyone aged 15-64 either in work or actively looking for work — recorded 43%, unchanged from last quarter and up from 42.6% in the same quarter of 2022.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

Microsoft’s new proposal to acquire Activision Blizzard, a US tech giant, is dominating headlines in the international business press. An initial bid issued in January 2022, offering USD 69 bn, has met regulatory obstacles in the US, Europe, and the UK. The new proposal has passed the initial stage with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and they will share their decision by Friday, 18 October. The previous proposal was rejected by the CMA citing a possible disruption to the competition of the emerging cloud game market in Europe, which Microsoft has offered to resolve by not having cloud rights for existing Activision PC and console games, or for more releases in the next 15 years. (Reuters | Financial Times | Wall Street Journal | CNBC)

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

No due diligence on United Bank just yet: Investors interested in acquiring stakes in United Bank will begin due diligence by the end of September.
Sukuk issuances just got easier: Companies will now be able to sell sukuk without first acquiring a credit rating after the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) waived the requirement.
A fresh bid for locally-made electrolyzers in Egypt: Hydrogen Egypt is partnering up with China’s Peric Hydrogen Technologies to explore the manufacturing and assembly of electrolyzers critical for green hydrogen production in Egypt.

CHECK OUT OUR AGENDA-

The Enterprise Finance Forum is taking place on 18-19 September at the St. Regis Hotel in Cairo. This flagship forum is the latest in our must-attend series of invitation-only, C-suite-level gatherings that allow senior members of our community to openly and frankly discuss critical issues in key sectors of the economy.

This is our first two-day event,which should give us plenty of time to dive into the nitty gritty of this industry we love. Our panels will see CEOs, bankers, investors and founders gather to discuss the future and trends shaping banking, finance, fintech and NBFS.

Our full agenda will be out at month’s end. Among the topics we’ll be discussing:

Looking into the crystal ball: Top industry CEOs will join us on stage to answer tough questions on where we are as an industry, the forces that will shape all of our businesses going forward, and their views on dealflow in the year ahead.
Surviving nuclear winter: We discuss how private equity and venture capital players are tackling challenges including fundraising and deployment in an environment in which it’s awfully difficult to price your local asset in USD terms.

The robots are coming: We explore what the coming AI and big data means for the industry in our part of the world and what can bankers, NBFI, and fintech players do to capitalize on them.
What do you do when nobody wants to be a banker — and when those who are already (investment or commercial) bankers are either (a) dreaming of doing their own startup or (b) moving to Dubai (or, increasingly, Riyadh)? We go deep into the weeds with industry leaders on how they’re building talent for tomorrow.
NBFIs are a bubble. Prove me wrong: We chart the explosive rise of NBFIs and ask whether the industry is ready for a wave of consolidation. We’ll dive into whether consumer finance is starting to mature as a segment — and ask which sector is next.
Handicapping the winners and losers in fintech in 2024: We dive deep into which categories are getting traction, where the untapped opportunities are, what business they would start today if they could, and what we can expect of the sector in the year ahead.
What’s a bank, anyway? Wherein we talk challenger and neobanks with the players looking to shake up the brick-and-mortar industry.

** NEW: MORE NETWORKING TIME- Our agenda includes expanded networking time, including an expanded coffee break and a post-event networking room for you to interact with your peers and speak one-on-one with the team at Enterprise.

STAY TUNED for more detail about our exciting agenda in the weeks to come.

TAP OR CLICK HERE if you want to express interest in attending. We’ll be sending out the first batch of invitations soon.

Do you want to become a commercial partner? Ping a note to Moustafa Taalab, our head of commercial.

☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect the heat to continue with the mercury staying at 40°C during the day and dropping to 23°C in the evening, tells us our favorite weather app.

Messimania in the US + Oman’s smart city by 2045?

Messimania in the US sends ticket prices soaring: The arrival of Lionel Messi in the US has sparked a frenzy among soccer fans, with ticket prices for Inter Miami games increasing by over 1700% on the resale market since the Argentinian superstar joined the club last month, CNBC reports. The average ticket price for an upcoming Inter Miami CF game against the New York Red Bulls is at a whopping USD 1.7k, up from last year’s average price of USD 90, according to TicketIQ data cited by CNBC. Meanwhile, the average ticket price for a game against rival Orlando City SC has also increased to USD 1.6k, a 1709% y-o-y increase.

BACKGROUND: Lionel Messi signed a lucrative contract with the club in July worth USD 50-60 mn annually, CNN reported. The contract includes an equity stake in the team, as well as undisclosed revenue-sharing agreements with Apple TV and Adidas. The Argentinian football superstar’s planned move came after he turned down a EUR 400 mn per year offer from Saudi’s Al Hilal, and after negotiations over his return to FC Barcelona fell through over the club’s financial restrictions.

Oman is getting on the s mart city bandwagon: Oman has announced plans to develop a 100k person smart city, Sultan Haitham City, in Al Seeb outside of Muscat by 2045, reports CNN. The city, which will include 20k homes, a university, schools, health facilities and mosques will be built by US architecture-engineering fusion firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill(SOM), the brains behind the engineering of the Burj Khalifa and the urban master plans of London’s Canary Wharf.

Are smart cities invasive or efficient? Smart cities rely on the “internet of things” to gather and use data from the built environment — sensors, cameras and internet-enabled devices — arguably at the cost of personal privacy. Nevertheless, it allows more efficient and effective public services such as traffic flow management and environmental monitoring. SOM has put forward a plan for an ecological city fit with solar energy facilities, wastewater recycling, electric vehicle infrastructure, waste-to-energy plants. Working with the environment is central to SOM’s plan, which also includes a 7.5 km park stretched along a dry river to promote the containment and capture of floodwater in an area often hit by seasonal flooding.

The move towards smart cities makes sense for Oman — and Egypt: Design that responds to its climate is essential for Oman, which is working towards its Vision 2040, part of which includes reducing the state’s dependence on oil, and its target to produce 30% of the country’s electricity from green sources by 2030. The Egyptian government has also been working to introduce as many as 38 new smart cities across the country as part of our sustainable development strategy, Egypt Vision 2030, with an eye on efficiently integrating these cities with the rest of the country.

AI skills are changing from being an asset to a workplace necessity: Globally, nearly 44% of existing jobs will require employees to learn new skills to keep up with AI developments, according to a study published by IBM based on surveys of workers and executives reported by Techspot. Executives believe that 4 out of 10 people — which is equivalent to 1.4 bn — have to acquire new skills. This is particularly apparent for entry-level jobs that will be more affected than the mid and senior management roles, where only 22% of them will need to get back into the training room.

The age of augmented workforce where machines and humans can cooperate to increase productivity and enhance problem solving will “disrupt 85 mn jobs globally between 2020 and 2025 — and create 97 mn new job roles,” according to the WEF. People’s performance will get better and it will not be replaced by AI and automation, the report claims. It also adds that employees and companies who zone in on AI will “see a 36% higher revenue growth rate than their peers.”

Watch a stellar cast take on Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7

? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-
(all times CLT)

The twice Oscar nominated The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a Netflix courtroom drama that brings together a cast of some young up and coming Hollywood stars. The film is set in 1968 and 1969, during the real-life eponymous trial of seven leftist defendants in Chicago for protesting the Vietnam war. The film kicks off with Nixon’s justice department charging these individuals — a ragtag collection of leftist organizers, most of whom aren’t connected by anything but their beliefs — with federal crimes of conspiracy and dissent. The powerhouse cast includes Eddie Redmayne and Alex Sharp as intellectual idealist students who believe that you can only change the system from within, Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong as counterculture yippies who only believe in change through the destruction of the system, John Carroll Lynch as a radical pacifist, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen as the national chairman of the Black Panther Party. It might feel a little too polished for a docudrama, and has caught a little bit of flack by its harshest critics for reducing a hallmark of systemic and politically-motivated injustice to a battle of Who Has the Best One-liner, but it is undoubtedly a grossly engaging depiction of a broken and corrupt justice system, released at a time where judicial miscarriages in the US were in the spotlight.

Swedish-Syrian singer Faya Younan and Medhat Saleh will be performing at the opening concert on Friday, 25 August.
Cairo Symphonic Orchestra and Wust El Balad band will be performing on Saturday, 26 August.
Hany Shaker will perform on Sunday, 27 August.
Hisham Abbas and Simone will perform on Monday, 28 August.
Mostafa Haggag will perform on Tuesday, 29 August.
Ali El Haggar will be performing on Thursday, 31 August.
Musician Hisham Kharma and the Tunsian singer Ghalia Benali will be performing on Sunday, 3 September.

Russ is coming to New Alamein. American pop star Russ will be performing as part of the New Alamein Festival this Friday, 25 August. Tickets are available on Tazkarti.

Get some more laughs over the weekend with The Elite Standup this Friday, 25 August at Paragon Beach Hub, New Alamein. The show will start at 7pm. Tickets are available on Tazkarti.

Cairokee x New Alamein Festival . Catch Cairokee in the few weekends left in Sahel as they perform on Saturday, 26 August in New Alamein as a part of the Alamein Music Festival. Tickets are available on Tazkarti.

Aziz Maraka x City Center Almaza. The Jordanian singer Aziz will be performing at the opening of “City Garage Hub'' at City Center Almaza Mall on Tuesday, 29 August. Tickets are available on Tazkarti.

El Morabba3 is coming to Egypt. The Jordanian rockband El Morabba3 will be performing in two concerts, the first one will be at the closing ceremony of the International Summer Festival that will be held at Bibliotheca Alexandrina on Friday, 1 September. The second one will be at El Sawy Culturewheel on Sunday, 3 September. Tickets are available here for Bibliotheca Alexandrina and here for El Sawy CultureWheel.

DJs Kygo , Tiësto, Kungs and Frank Walker are performing on Saturday, 28 October at the Giza Pyramids. The concert will be part of the next edition of the four-day Palm Tree Music Festival (PTMF) which will be held from Thursday, 26 October until Sunday, 29 October.

Get your running shoes ready for the 2023 edition of the El Gouna Half Marathon, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 11 November. You can sign up for the marathon from here — and catch the lowest registration price with the early bird special which starts today and ends Saturday, 30 September.

Deacon King Kong ’s anti-hero, Sportcoat, is a beloved and slightly eccentric church deacon in 1969 Brooklyn. After shooting the local drug dealer in a low-income housing area, he sets off a catalyst of events involving the whole community, the church, the local Italian mafia, and the police. James McBride’s novel has been added to Oprah’s Book Club, and with good reason: His masterful prose brings the neighborhood to life in all its glory and all its shame. Characters in the novel are not neatly good or bad — each individual is a complex ecosystem on their own, each with their own voice, background, and dream. They are all, as a community usually is, intertwined in more convoluted ways that is immediately apparent. There is a thread of humor woven throughout the novel, and McBride’s dialogue is sharply written, witty, and absurdly insightful. At its core, and despite the tragedy and the struggle, Deacon King Kong is a celebration of community. You can find copies at Diwan, currently on sale for EGP 213, and Cherry Blossom Books for EGP 270.

What the markets are doing on 22 August, 2023

The EGX30 rose 1.7% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 2.4 bn (18% above the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is up 24.8% YTD.

In the green: Eastern Company (+8.5%), Edita (+5.8%) and Mopco (+5.6%).

In the red: Oriental Weavers (-1.1%), Juhayna (-1.1%) and B Investments Holding (-0.9%).

Meet our founder of the week: Buguard founder and CTO Youssef Mohamed

OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK– Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Youssef Mohamed (Linkedin), founder and CTO of cybersecurity startup Buguard.

My name is Youssef Mohamed and I’m the founder and CTO of Buguard. Buguard started back in 2021 as a professional services company and then we evolved to include a products and solutions portfolio. We mainly provide offensive security and governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) services to our customers, as well as dark web monitoring and solutions to help our customers prevent data leaks and impersonations for C-suite employees. We’re based in Egypt and we recently raised USD 500k in a seed round led by MENA VC firm A15.

I started in cybersecurity as a security engineer back in 2017. I started freelancing because in the industry we have something called “bug bounties”: Big companies asking security engineers to find vulnerabilities in their systems and reporting them in exchange for monetary rewards — possibly up to USD 10k per bug. So I did that for companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Snapchat, and others — it was very rewarding. I then took up cybersecurity positions in several companies like Zinad, PwC Singapore, and PayMob. I still do bug bounty freelancing in addition to running a blog and Arabic cybersecurity podcast providing security content, because it’s my passion.

The reason we started Buguard is that startups typically don’t get big companies’ attention for cybersecurity services due to budget restraints. Throughout my career, I noticed we focused on a single type of customer and few companies cared about startups. But the fact of the matter is that these smaller businesses hold our data; we use them on a regular basis. What if they were to get hacked? That happens. That’s why we started Buguard: To provide cybersecurity to all companies, regardless of their size and budget.

There were many challenges when I started Buguard. Initially, I started working in the UA market as it is huge and you can find customers who can evaluate your company based on your technical skills. But in our neck of the woods, it’s different. You need references and a big client base to begin working. That’s why Egypt was a tough market to compete in and we started working abroad until we built a solid enough client base and team. Currently, the challenge is more about hiring talented candidates as we are very selective since our mission — which includes companies or banks — is critical.

My advice to anyone starting their own business is to be patient and focus on the work. Don’t give up early on — hard work pays off. There are several people I personally turn to when I am in need of advice. Mostafa Menessy (Linkedin), the CTO of Paymob, is one of them. I consider him my technical adviser. Being the founder of a startup is a very lonely journey until you find a great team to rely on.

The main KPIs we consider are how many customers we’ve helped and have on board and how many problems are reported to us from customers. We also look at any problems that may exist within our team — we are trying to maintain the same family-like dynamic we have and for that we must solve any issues in the early stages.

Buguard was initially bootstrapped, since we’re a profitable company. The funding round we just closed was our very first. But we didn’t go to them for just the money: A15 is a great group of minds when it comes to business — and we needed their help with that. Having the support of Karim Beshara for example is a great plus. As for the funding, it will help us expand faster than originally planned and expedite this growth regionally beginning with KSA and the GCC before eyeing global expansion.

If I had to exit my business, it would be through an IPO. We are currently working on multiple product portfolios, including a brand protection platform, a service management platform, and enhancing our dark web platform —- because there’s market demand for it. So yes, the IPO would be the best option for us.

I’ve been in the industry since the age of 15 so my family is very supportive. I started off doing it without charge, because it’s been my passion. By the age of 17, I was making revenue so it made my parents very proud.

One of my favorite podcasts is Business bel Arabi . It’s great — I try to listen to all their episodes as I love what they’re doing. In my own podcast, Radio Hack, which focuses mainly on cybersecurity, I try to invite leaders from all over the globe to discuss topics and answer questions from within our industry and community. We have invited leaders from the region and other foreign guests like John Hammond (Linkedin), one of the most popular security engineers in the world.

What inspires me is being good at what I do, like hearing that my customers are satisfied. Currently with Buguard, enhancing and producing quality makes me proud, and pushes me forward. It’s really a mindset: I love finding flaws and loopholes in major systems — that gives me the motivation to keep going.

In my freetime, I like hacking and learning about new topics. When it comes to sports, I like to play padel in the little spare time I have.

One local startup that’s doing a great job in the fintech industry in my opinion is PayMob. They’re doing a great job — the executive team is very talented and they have great leaders within the organization when it comes to security and development. They’re growing very fast while maintaining their quality, which I respect. Menthum is another example: Ismail Sarhank (Linkedin) and Himanshu Shrimali, the founders, are doing something very unique.

If I hadn’t started Buguard I would probably be leading a security team. Probably at one of the organizations I previously worked at, like PwC Singapore or Facebook. But thank god that I have focused on Buguard because my ambition is to build something and have a second family to work with. Helping multiple security teams is better than managing just one.

The Egyptian cybersecurity startup scene is full of talent and companies are growing. The weakness, however, is that industry players in Egypt focus on services rather than products — except maybe for two or three companies including us. This is upsetting because we have the talent: We have the best coders and security engineers competing all over the world but our country does not have a very successful industry yet. That pushes us to work on our products to become top leaders without changing our brand identity because we are proud to be Egyptian.

THE ENTERPRISE ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR

AUGUST

21 August (Monday): Akher Zafeer concert, El Sawy Culturewheel, El Zamalek, Cairo.

22 August (Tuesday): Weekend Comedy show, the Cairo Jazz Club 610, Sheikh Zayed.

22 August (Tuesday): Omar Khairat Live Concert, Royal Maxim Palace Kempinski, Cairo.

23 August (Wednesday):El Dor El Awal and Wust El Balad concert, Cairo Jazz Club 610, Sheikh Zayed.

25 August (Friday): Faya Younan and Medhat Saleh concert, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

25 August (Friday): Russ Concert, New Alamein Festival 2023, New Alamein.

25 August (Friday): The Elite stand up comedy performance, New Alamein Festival 2023, Paragon Beach Hub, New Alamein.

26 August (Saturday):Cairokee concert, New Alamein Festival, New Alamein.

26 August (Saturday): Cairo Symphonic Orchestra and West El Balad band, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

27 August (Sunday): Hany Shaker concert, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

28 August (Monday): Hisham Abbas and Simone concert, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

29 August (Tuesday): Aziz Maraka concert, City Center Almaza Mall, Cairo.

31 August (Thursday): Ali El Haggar concert, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

SEPTEMBER

1 September (Friday): El Morabba3 band concert, Summer International Festival, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria.

3 September (Sunday):El Morabba3 band concert, El Sawy Culturalwheel, El Zamalek, Cairo

3 September (Sunday): Hisham Kharma and Ghalia Benali concert, Citadel Festival for Music and Singing, Citadel Salah El Din, Cairo.

21-23 September (Thursday-Saturday) L’Etape Egypt by Tour de France, Sharm El Sheikh

26 September (Tuesday): Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (TBC).

28 September (Thursday): National holiday in observance of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (TBC).

OCTOBER

6 October (Friday): Armed Forces Day.

13-20 October (Friday-Friday): El Gouna Film Festival (GFF).

28 October (Saturday): Djs Kygo, Tiësto, Kung and Frank Walker concert, Giza Pyramids.

NOVEMBER

11 November (Saturday): El Gouna Half Marathon 2023, El Gouna.

15-24 November (Wednesday-Friday): Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF).

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2023: The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum.

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